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Deception special: The great pretender

By Clare Wilson

Derren Brown is a British illusionist who specialises in psychological techniques that give the appearance of mind-reading and thought control. Some of his most famous stunts include apparently playing Russion roulette on live TV, and performing as a medium before an audience of spiritualists in the US. He shares some of his secrets with New Scientist.

How did you acquire your psychological skills?

I started as a hypnotist and found the area fascinating. However, I didn’t want to be a full-time stage hypnotist, and equally hypnotherapy sounded a pretty grotesque line to take. So it left me with a bunch of skills I wasn’t sure how to apply, until I started performing “close-up” magic. This became my career for a while, but it was always the psychology of magic that interested me more than the sleight of hand. So eventually I came to fuse the two skill bases into roughly what I’m doing now.

Can you tell if someone is lying to you?

The truthful answer is that sometimes it’s very easy and sometimes it’s quite tough. It all depends on the person. There’s a lot of research in this area, and technology being developed as we speak, which wouldn’t be happening if you could reliably spot a lie by a few classic signs. However, with about three-quarters of people I can tell pretty much instantaneously, and the more they are put on the spot, the easier it is.

What are the most common giveaways?

Generally people make tiny movements – often “micro-signals” that are too small to spot without special recording equipment – which seem …